Dressed in long pants, long-sleeve shirts and closed-toed shoes, a team of researchers from Colorado Parks and Wildlife gathered in a sagebrush-grass meadow near Gunnison, Colo. this summer, each with a GPS in hand. Lining up 10 meters apart along the border of a virtual grid, they walked straight lines over a Gunnison’s prairie dog […]
Wildlife
Posted inGoat
Feeding elk – and spreading chronic wasting disease
Imagine taking a horse-drawn sleigh ride among an elk herd numbering in the thousands. At the National Elk Refuge, such an adventure is available to winter visitors from mid-December through early April. (These) rides are the most popular winter activity, allowing riders a unique wildlife viewing experience and an incredible opportunity for photography That’s how […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
It’s time to get all the lead out
Kudos to the California Legislature for doing the obvious, and banning lead bullets for hunting (“The Latest: Lead bullets,” HCN, 11/11/13). Here’s hoping other states will soon follow suit, NRA paranoia notwithstanding. It’s worth noting that only one Republican legislator voted for the bill on either the Senate or Assembly floor. Shouldn’t environmental protection be […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
What’s happening in other Western forests?
AspenAfter hundreds of thousands of acres of aspen in the West perished during the 2000s, William Anderegg, a Princeton University forest and climate researcher, set out to test tree physiologist Nate McDowell’s hypothesis that drought killed trees in one of two ways: thirst or starvation. Anderegg found that aspen primarily died of thirst, but it […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
Wild ideas, reconsidered
Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in AmericaJon Mooallem328 pages, hardcover; $27.95.Penguin Press, 2013. San Francisco-based author Jon Mooallem asks some hard questions in Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America. Perhaps the hardest one, for […]
Posted inGoat
Negotiations speed up endangered-species listings
In northern Arizona, a tiny cactus, not more than 3.5 inches tall, lifts a creamy yellow flower above the desert rock each spring. Roughly 1,000 of these rare plants still grow, living 10 to 15 years and rising from the earth to flower each season before sinking back after fruiting. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2013: Ecosystems 101
On (not) being Jane Goodall
A writer wonders what it would be like to study the coati, a Southwestern cousin of the raccoon.
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Speaking of Wild Horses
Why read the article when you can read the thread instead?
Posted inNovember 25, 2013: Ecosystems 101
Hard lessons from the mighty salmon runs of Bristol Bay
The world’s longest ongoing salmon research reveals the astounding complexity of wild ecosystems.
Posted inGoat
Discovery: Good ol’ tallgrass was formed by good ol’ bacteria
It’s always tempting to reflect on how wonderful the West used to be. You know what I mean: Conservationists and Natives lament that the first invasions by white settlers wrecked everything, and ranchers and loggers long for a return to the era before 750-page environmental-impact statements. Who among us hasn’t conjured up wistful images of […]
Posted inArticles
Montana’s Dueling Dinosaur fossils get no action at the auction
The controversial specimens still seek a scientific home.
Posted inNovember 25, 2013: Ecosystems 101
The Latest: Teton pronghorn migration helped by overpasses
BackstoryFor roughly 6,000 years, Wyoming pronghorn have migrated seasonally between the mountains of Grand Teton National Park and the warmer plains of the Upper Green River Basin. The roughly 100-mile journey is among the longest land migrations of North American mammals. But biologists worry that roadways and new energy and housing development threaten to fragment […]
Posted inGoat
Emerald ash borers arrive in the West. How far will they go?
Alongside the spotted knapweed and zebra mussels, the non-native species is a new unwelcome visitor.
Posted inGoat
An important win for black-footed ferret reintroduction
Once a thriving predator on prairie landscapes, the black-footed ferret was squeezed out of its range by agriculture and development, and their populations ravaged by diseases like sylvatic plague, which was introduced from Asia at the turn of the 20th century. Ferrets’ main source of food, prairie dogs, have long been considered pests to agriculture […]
Posted inRange
Putting politics before science won’t save the lobo
With winter upon us and the days getting noticeably shorter, so too is the time left to speak out on behalf of Mexican gray wolves. Among the country’s most imperiled species, there are only about 75 lobos left in the wild. The ultimate fate of these iconic animals could be decided in the next year […]
Posted inGoat
Pisaster disaster: When starfish wasting disease strikes, there’s only one man to call
Dr. Chris Mah may be the only man in the world who can correctly identify any species of starfish on sight. Growing up in San Francisco on a steady diet of sushi and Japanese monster movies, it was no wonder he was attracted to the weird, slimy invertebrates he plucked from the shores of the […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2013: Cosmic Prospecting
Can rocks and paintballs help humans and mountain goats coexist?
An alternative approach to wildlife management in the Olympic National Forest.
Posted inNovember 11, 2013: Cosmic Prospecting
The Latest: California is first state to ban lead ammunition to protect condors
BackstoryCalifornia condors were nearly extinct by the 1980s. Thanks to habitat loss, wanton shooting, egg collecting, and the scavenger’s propensity for eating animal carcasses tainted by lead bullet fragments, fewer than 30 remained. After decades of captive breeding, about 200 condors now fly free in central California, Utah, Arizona and Mexico. But death by lead […]
Posted inGoat
Teton pronghorn take to highway crossings the third time around
For 15 days last year, Renee Seidler, a scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, sat in a truck near a highway and watched the fall migration of Wyoming’s pronghorn. It was the first time since the construction of Highway 191 that the 300-head Teton herd had an alternative to dodging cars and trucks to get […]